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Monday, February 07, 2011

PNC Meeting: A New Church and No to NFOG

(Photo by Dwayne Bailey--hope you don't mind my copying it!)

You see above the most important thing that happened at Saturday's meeting of the Presbytery of New Covenant. Approval was given to charter our new church development, Pathways, as an official congregation for the PC(USA).

Pathways is a young congregation of mostly second and third generation Asian-Americans in the inner city area of Houston. In fact the group is so youthful that the organizing pastor, Rev. Shawn Kang, says that they don't need a youth group yet because all the children in the congregation are so young.

This is the fifth new church charter approved by our presbytery in the last six years! We're not finding the Book of Order an impediment to growing new congregations in this area.

Which brings me to the NFOG vote, which was also taken at this meeting. NFOG was resoundingly defeated, 186 to 44.

There is a back story to this issue in our presbytery. PNC created a study group after the 2008 GA to review the NFOG. Our group found many of the same problems that have been raised by those who oppose the current NFOG that we are now voting on, and forwarded their concerns and suggestions to the NFOG Task Force. None of their issues were addressed.

If the NFOG is not adopted, hopefully a new Task Force with new members will be created that will review the proposal and work to resolve these issues.

UPDATE: Here's the video that was shown at the Presbytery Meeting prior to the vote on approving the chartering of Pathways Church!

6 comments:

Sadly, we voted to approve nFoG. I could rest a bit easier if I was convinced that everybody really understood what they were voting for. I just don't think if it passes, people will really understand what they've done.

Rev Kim--No, I don't think people understand it. I don't mean to horribilize it, either. However there will be a lot of confusion and frustration in the transition. Also I really do think that over time presbyteries in different synods could become very different from each other in practice and I think that is not a good thing.

Slight correction - some of our study group's concerns were addressed and some were partially addressed. Some of the items we raised were, admittedly, nit-picking, but others were, IMO, significant. QG, I've forwarded a a copy of that report to your email address - hope I have the right one!